Left I on the News

A leftwing view of the day's news and the way it's presented in the media

Friday, January 19, 2007

Life in Israel

Most Americans think of Israel as a progressive Western country, sort of a Mediterranean Miami Beach. Here's a part of the story you rarely see (Rarely? Make that "never," at least in the American corporate press. The Israeli press is a different story):

A woman who reported a vicious attack by an ad-hoc "modesty patrol" on a Jerusalem bus last month is now lining up support for her case and may be included in a petition to the High Court of Justice over the legality of sex-segregated buses.

Miriam Shear says she was traveling to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City early on November 24 when a group of ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) men attacked her for refusing to move to the back of the Egged No. 2 bus. She is now in touch with several legal advocacy and women's organizations, and at the same time, waiting for the police to apprehend her attackers.

In her first interview since the incident, Shear says that on the bus three weeks ago, she was slapped, kicked, punched and pushed by a group of men who demanded that she sit in the back of the bus with the other women.

When they call Israel the "Jewish state," they're not referring to Reform Judaism.